Legion

Promo piece for Austin Mansfield's Legion indie game for X-Box 360.

Raphael

Done for ConceptArt.org's Character of the Week competition. This week was Archangels, showing both their warrior and healing aspects.
I chose Raphael, who is the protector of travelers, shepherds, the mentally ill, the blind, and healer of the sick.
WiPs here. 
Ref pose from SenshiStock

Steampunk Aphrodite

 

Done for ConceptArt.org's Character of the Week competition.  The theme was "Steampunk Aphrodite." 

WIPS

Redo of Spider Prostitute

I darkened it and added some texturing to her skin.

Daeva: Kiss of the Succubus (Mature)

Daeva, from Vampire: the Requiem, is the clan of vampires who embody all the sexual attributes vampires are given in fiction.  For them, sexual lust and bloodlust are the same.  Beautiful and decadent, they use these qualities to lure in victims, supplying them with the most amazing sensual experience ever in return for blood.

I ended up recycling a pose from the drawing I'd done of Brooke and Erin last summer, but cleaned it up for this.  I still haven't gotten to do my idea of bodies under the bed, but maybe that is something I'll have to add to a future picture sans this specific pose.

I really need to mix things up with a hetero vamp & victim one of these days.

Cynthia's Circus Card

The first weekend of October, AlyshaKahuna joined me when I went to New York to attend the birthday party of Cynthia von Buhler.  The theme of the party was Freaks, and the menu included popcorn, hotdogs, and cotton candy, so we decided to present her with a circus themed card/gift.  (The actual post on the party is yet to come, I am still backed up on schoolwork at the moment.)

The party was also to celebrate the publishing of the Evelyn Evelyn graphic novel, so I included them in the card.  I wanted to reimagine Evelyn Evelyn's circus life as somewhat happier, though Alysha made sure everything remained a little sinister under the happy colors.  I added Sandy Fishnets as the trapeze artist just so the girls would be reunited with their childhood friend.

This is the second collaboration between Alysha and I.  For JAFAX this summer, she did some quick drawings of some yokai based on my suggestions and we sold badges and stickers of them at our table.  So began us working together.  For this one, I came up with the concept, sketched it out, directed her as she worked, printed/cut out/arranged the final images and helped with things here and there.  We discussed how nice it was working together and I've decided my new longterm goal is to become an art director.

Alysha did a wonderful job inking and hand-painting everything especially since we had less than a week to do it and ended up doing 3/4 of it in a hotel in Jersey.

Below are her drawings for this.  As she did all the final work on the characters, I've watermarked them with her name.

Ringmaster

Strongman

Bimba & Kimba, the world's only conjoined elephant

Sandy Fishnets as a trapeze artist

Eva and Lynn, or Lynn and Eva

Tata Gala 2010 Entry

This is my first year entering a submission to Tata Gala.  I intend to try to enter each year since it's for a really good cause.  Part of the proceeds from the entry fees and sales of the artwork go toward Breast Cancer Research.

This is my first time playing with textures like this, and I'm really pleased with the result.  I will have to try it more often.

Sorry for the lack of updates.  I've been busy and should be able to post a couple of blog entries about what I've been up to this last month.

Edit: I just found out my piece was accepted to the gallery show!

Strix- Night Horrors: Wicked Dead

A strix is a two-foot creature resembling an owl or crow made up of gnats and black smoke with glowing eyes. They can possess the living, dead, or vampires.

For my portfolio class, my professor wanted me to choose existing passages from books to illustrate.  I chose the strix from Night Horrors: Wicked Dead from White Wolf, my favorite role-playing book by them.  It was the first I ever bought and I love the art and monsters in it.  There are a few pictures of strixes in it but none with it actually in the middle of possessing someone.

The next will probably be a Daeva or Mekhet.

Leather Pants & Riding Crop

My second piece for my summer illustration class in the style of Erik Jones.  The first piece was really of just a practice, it wasn't until this that I got the hang of it.

The Behr house paint worked really well though I'll need more practice and find a better brush for thin hair strands.  On both pictures I started off the colored pencil technique wrong but realized what I was doing so subsequent works in this style should look a lot better.

I'm really happy with this piece and really want to do more mix-media paintings like this.

Buried Treasure

For my summer illustration class, I decided to do my work in the style of Erik Jones, one of my favorite artists.  I love his blend of graphic flats and detailed skin tones.

I had managed to use the same materials that Erik uses except the paint.  He uses Behr house paint but I figured artist acrylics would give me more of a range but they ended up just being a blotchy nightmare.  It was a waste of money but now I know to use the right paint on the next one.

I had problems with the colored pencils on the skin because I didn't do large enough areas of flesh so it was difficult to blend it.  The next one should be cropped in closer.

The bottom half of the picture isn't exactly the right color.  It should be richer but I couldn't get the settings in Photoshop to match them well enough.  I'll take a new photo when I have better lighting.

Overall, a great learning experience, and I think I need to push the next one to have more design elements.

Models are Emily and Ninja.

Materials are Rives BFK heavyweight, Prismacolor pencils, Winsor Newton Acylics, Gamblin watercolors, and Copic markers with awesome names.

Yokai Screen

Originally the screen was supposed to have a Hyakki Yakō (demon parade) on it but I couldn't find a good print of one and didn't have time to draw something to complicated in two weeks.  Instead I went with Mitsukini Defying the Skeleton Spectre by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.  The shoji screen was also supposed to be old and haunted with eyes showing through, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without looking cartoonish.  I was also going to include some hitodama (will-o-wisp souls) but it was a bit too much.

The yokai are:
A kitsune, a fox that turns into a woman to seduce men.  Often they will marry the man and even bear him children before something happens to make her leave, like the family getting a dog, which kitsune fear.
A nekomata, a two-tailed monster cat that stands up on its hind legs, drinks lamp oil and can reanimate corpses.
An Onryō, a ghost of revenge, seen in movies like Juon: The Grudge, Shutter, and Ringu.  Filled with hatred from abuse during their life, they come back for vengeance, unfortunately the one(s) who wronged them often go unscathed while people who just happen to get in its way become victims.  
A Noppera-bō, a trickster ghost with no face.  Sometimes mujina (raccoon dogs or badgers) will take on their appearance to mess with humans.  Noppera-bō will impersonate someone famous or close to the human and then make their features disappear.

Work In Progress

Cat from: ~Loopyker_stock

Jorougumo (Nudity)

  

The Jorōgumo, or "spider whore," is a spider that can turn itself into a seductive woman in order to capture and eat men.

I depicted her as an oiran, or the highest class of prostitute.  The hairstyle and ornaments are a lot more complicated than a geisha's.

Onmyoji

Onmyoji were practitioners of onmyōdō, "a mixture of natural science and occultism," according to Wikipedia.  They were also known as Ying Yang masters and studied the five elements.  Some of the more powerful ones were supposedly capable of tying shikigami, a kind of spirit, to paper dolls and having them doing jobs around the house. 

More of my illustration to send to World of Darkness, for Mage, or such card games as Legend of the Five Rings.

World of Darkness: Hunter- Samurai

In Illustration class, we had to decide on a market and make four cohesive paintings.  I decided to stick with art to submit to White Wolf, and I hadn't seen anything from the New WoD that had an Asian theme, so I wanted to make all four pictures have one.

The first one I chose was Hunter and created a ronin to fight oni and monsters.  I based the look of the supernatural being after kabuki outfits and make-up for a demon.  The samurai has sliced his way through the demon with what may or may not be an empowered blade.  I have a little energy eminating from it, though the wisps are supposed to be parts of the demon, though it may indeed be holy flames too.

The next one will be an onmyoji, or Ying Yang Master.

Linda Fireflies Book Cover

So I finished the book cover for Fireflies, a vampire romance novel by Lacey Rhea.  To read excerpts from the book and get more information, check out the Myspace page.  It's for adults and has Mature Content.  The image is of when the main character is turned in Central Park while other nymphomites lurk in the background to take their turn drinking.  I'll post again when the book is published.

Female Monsters Series 1

My final print for the etching assignment in Printmaking. This is part of what I hope will be an ongoing series of female monsters.

The first is a pananggalan, a Malaysian monster that detaches its head at night and drinks the blood of children and pregnant women. More info can be found here.

From here I decided to continue with a motif of heads surrounded by undulating, twisted tubes of some sort.

The second is Medusa, the Gorgon from Greek mythology that was killed by Perseus. Her hair was snakes and her eyes turned victims to stone.

The third is a Japanese yokai known as a Rokurokubi, a woman whose neck stretches at night so she can play tricks on drunk men and fools. I tried to replicate the look of a tradition ukiyo-e print.

All are copper etchings. I used Aquatint on all three, and softground on the latter two.

References:
Penangalan
Yokai

Vampire & Fairy Tale Finals

Ahh, finals. I finished my magnetic paper dolls and my banner is printed for any future cons.

ColorInc printed my vampires on a silk banner. It got a lot of abuse this weekend, including through a rainstorm, and it doesn't show it.



The magnets had to be cut out by hand with an X-acto blade because I didn't have enough time to get it done by the DigiFabLab.


Red is wearing a gothic outfit based on designs by Lip Service, with an optional Big Bad Wolf-fur-trimmed coat and boots, Belle/Beauty is dressed as a Sweet Lolita (credit of fashion inspiration later,) and Rapunzel is a cyber-raver. final pic, so that'll have to come later.

My watercolors didn't get finished enough in the teacher's opinion, but I've been given some extra time. Once I get some sleep and don't have a digital media project due every other day I should be able to get my painting done well enough.

I forgot to scan my zombie

After I kill enough time watching TV I'll sleep the night and wake up to finish my Gay Marriage editorial cartoon for Social Criticism.

My business stuff finally got printed after a weekend of broken printers and empty toner. Most of them look great and the blog for it is here. If it's my professional blog, I'm not sure what this one is, but I'm not shutting this one down any time soon. This one will just have more talking.

Vampires in Winter

Closeup:

Too dark female scarecrow

I think it's too dark. I was trying to do back-lighting because it wasn't dark enough during the critique. I would like to improve it, so please give suggestions and critiques. I'll credit the refs later. Click the link for a larger view.